"And I'm going to be asking more people around the country -- more inventors and entrepreneurs and visionaries -- to sign up to serve," Obama said. "We've got to have the brightest minds to help solve our biggest challenges. And it's a reminder that in this democracy, we the people recognize that this government belongs to us, and it's up to each of us and every one of us to make it work better. We can't just stand on the sidelines."

Don't expect Apple-like innovation at the U.S. government, however. So far, most of the progress made in this effort has been on ways to deliver services faster, reduce waste and open government data to entrepreneurs, so they can deliver that data to consumers in useful ways.

There's also an effort under way, called MyUSA, that will save Americans time by enabling government web sites to fill in some of your personal data for you, just like online shopping web sites do. Another project in development will allow Americans who apply for government benefits "to track the status of your application in real time, just like you can follow location of a package all the way to your doorstep," Obama said.

The fact the president points to such plain-vanilla services as innovations shows just how clunky government is.

But there's been some improvement since Obama took office.

His 2008 presidential campaign "used technology to bring people together, and then trusted them with that technology to organize on their own," he recalled. Obama thought he could use a similar approach while governing.

But "once we got to Washington, instead of an operation humming with the latest technology, I had to fight really hard just to keep my BlackBerry," he recalled.